Portuguese men o’ war plague beaches in Europe amid heatwave Financial Times UK 19 Aug 2026 KENZA BRYAN — LONDON Authorities along the Atlantic Ocean’s Bay of Biscay have warned in recent weeks that the species typically found in tropical waters has been appearing on European beaches that tourists and locals have used to cool down from heatwaves. Meanwhile, warnings for traditional species of jellyfish are in place along the Mediterranean coast. In northern France, an EDF nuclear reactor was still offline yesterday after a “massive arrival” of jellyfish last week clogged cooling pumps. Sightings of unwelcome jellyfish in Europe this year have coincided with a historic marine heatwave and increased interest from researchers in the species’ ability to thrive in oceans warmed by climate change. Scientists who collaborated on the well-respected World Weather Attribution project said last week that high temperatures in European oceans would have been “virtually impossible” without global ...
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THE US CONSTITUTION BETRAYED: JOHN ROBERTS' APOSTASY OF DEMOCRACY. D uring Roberts’s time in the Reagan Administration, a new conception of government was firing up young conservative warriors in the Justice Department. It wasn’t just the President’s antipathy to the federal bureaucracy in general, and to independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board in particular. It was the notion that the power of the Presidency needed strengthening. In the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era, this thinking went, Congress had gone too far in constraining the executive branch with presumptuous reforms that aimed to secure greater accountability and transparency from the White House. In a memoir, William French Smith, Reagan’s Attorney General, listed many changes he despised, including “the so-called Ethics in Government Act,” the legislative veto, the War Powers resolution, and “restrictions on the president’s appointment and removal powers.” Smit...
US states accuse Meta of covering up research on teen social media addiction in pivotal trial The sweeping legal proceedings could have profound consequences for the social media company. Photograph: Iryna Khabliuk/Alamy State attorneys general claim tech company intentionally designed addictive products that harm young people Lawyers representing 29 US states have accused Meta of covering up internal research showing Instagram was addictive for teenagers. In a packed courtroom Tuesday, on the opening day of a landmark legal challenge, they said the company knew its products harmed children but hid that information from the public. “I heard from many of you at jury selection that the health and wellbeing of kids is a shared responsibility,” said Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney general for California , in her opening statements. “Meta didn’t do its share.” O’Neill told jurors that she would be giving them a preview of what they could expect to see over the course of the trial,...
Long-term borrowing costs hit highs as inflation and fiscal deficit fears rise AI bonds surge fuels sell-off ▸ Pub lic debt under strain ▸ Fal lout for equit ies ▸ Oil’s rise dims out look Financial Times Europe19 Aug 2026EMILY HERBERT — LONDON HARRIET CLARFELT — NEW YORK Long-term bor row ing costs hit mul ti dec ade highs yes ter day as fears over infla tion,fiscal defi cits and sur ging AI bond issu ance put pres sure on gov ern ment debtaround the world. The yield on 30-year US Treas ur ies hit 5.34 per cent, its highest since 2007, hav ingbeen below 5 per cent at the start of last month. Long-term European debt, led bythe 30-year Ger man Bund and French debt of the same matur ity also rose, to levelslast seen in 2011 and 2008, respect ively. Yields move inversely to prices. “The bond mar ket is indeed get ting nervous,” said Vin cent Mor tier, chief invest -ment officer at Amundi, Europe’s largest asset man ager, amid “grow ing con cern onthe fiscal tra ject or ies of many coun tries w...
AI phobia is the new American consensus Financial Times Europe19 Aug 2026Edward Luce edward.luce@ft.com Stop us before we end human ity,” the AI titans keep telling us. Also, “trust me andme alone, not my com pet it ors”. Whether it is Meta’s Mark Zuck er berg, OpenAI’sSam Alt man, xAI’s Elon Musk or even Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Amer ica’s techbro l ig archs are their own worst alarm ists. In the same breath as warn ing thathumans are head ing for the evol u tion ary dust bin, they vow to end dis ease, abol ishwork and fix global warm ing. Call it death cult uto pi an ism. Amer ic ans are nowincreas ingly focused on the death cult part. Little the tech chief tains say should be taken at face value. Every utter ance must befiltered through the lens of mar ket rivalry. Put simply, the AI com pan ies that areper form ing best — not ably Anthropic, which is pre par ing for AI’s largest ever ini -tial pub lic offer ing — are in favour of reg u la tion and closed-weight mod els, or thos...
Trump races to prepare for new strains of deadly viruses after cutting biosecurity experts By the end of President Joe Biden’s term, the White House had built a team of as many as 30 people focused on biological security, according to three former government officials who worked on the issue — two for Biden and Trump, and one just for Biden — and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional retaliation. This specialized staff was charged with coordinating the web of federal agencies that deal with biohazards and provided scientific guidance to top officials. That team rapidly dwindled after Trump returned to office amid cuts and reorganizations, said the three former officials, as well as a fourth former official, who also worked for both administrations. At times, nobody at the White House was dedicated solely to biosecurity, according to three of the former officials. The losses have come as the administration has delayed replacing key Biden-era directives. It rev...
Zuckerberg faces potential reckoning in court over Instagram’s effects on teens The case headed to court in Oakland, California, was brought by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. They demand that Meta pay as much as $1.4 trillion — almost as much as the company’s total value — and redesign its products as restitution for the harms it has caused young users. The lawsuit alleges that Meta designed its Facebook and Instagram apps to get teenagers addicted to its services while at the same time mounting a public-relations campaign to convince parents and politicians that its products were safe for young people to use. “This is hugely significant,” said Clay Calvert, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “It is a reckoning to them in terms of how they deliver content to minors.” Meta has rejected the states’ claims in court filings, arguing the case failed to show evidence of real-world harm and asks f...